| Author | Message | | hateliars | | Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 3:20 am Post subject: |
| A couple of observations.
One, a lot of the dead appear to be babies. Why would Saddam want to kill children?
Two, why is that lady's sign in English? Who wrote it for her? | |  | | Nobody | | Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 3:43 am Post subject: |
| | hateliars wrote: | A couple of observations.
One, a lot of the dead appear to be babies. |
Sure we all know how much of a monster Saddam was, but funny how it all goes quiet about the 500,000 children dying under UN sanctions. take it away Mad-eline..
Here's the quote:
Leslie Stahl: "We have heard that a half million children have died (as a
result of sanctions against Iraq). I mean, that is more children than died
in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"
Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we
think the price is worth it."
A CBS Sixty Minutes interview between Leslie Stahl and U.S. Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright, on 12 May 1996 http://www.casi.org.uk/discuss/1999/msg00169.html http://www.coastalpost.com/99/2/9.htm | | | | Lautaro | | Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 7:21 pm Post subject: Re: To kkk-boy |
| Continuation and End of:
THE SERIES: Elite unit savaged civilians in Vietnam
"There were so many people dying," said Vo Thanh Tien, a communal leader.
That's why he and others say the U.S. and Vietnamese governments should investigate the atrocities committed in the valley nearly four decades ago.
Mr. Vo and others said they want to know why the Army let its troops lose control, especially among noncombatants who took no side in the war.
Unlike other areas of Quang Ngai province, the valley - connected to the coast by twisting dirt roads - was not a center of rebellion, say Vietnamese historians. For hundreds of years, the fertile basin was settled by farmers who grew rice in one of the most productive regions of the nation.
"These are people who did nothing," said Lu Thuan, who hid in the mountains to avoid being shot.
Mr. Vo said the attacks on civilians between June and August, 1967, were war crimes that Americans never publicly acknowledged.
"We think the U.S. government should take responsibility and look back at what happened during the war to these people," he said.
Records in the National Archives - mostly 1967 battalion reports - do not indicate the villagers in Song Ve Valley were hostile to U.S. troops.
Former Tiger Force platoon members said their mission was to stop the farming in the Song Ve to deprive the Viet Cong of a potential food source.
During a 41/2-year Army investigation of Tiger Force atrocities - from 1971 to 1975 - 14 soldiers said they witnessed or participated in the killings of at least nine unarmed villagers in the valley. But those are just the documented cases.
In recent interviews with The Blade, several former platoon soldiers said they fired on numerous villagers who were never counted among the dead.
Several assaults were carried out after the valley was declared a "free-fire zone" - a military designation often misinterpreted by soldiers to mean that they could fire freely on unarmed civilians. But it only allowed soldiers to attack when they received fire, and only to shoot at the enemy, not unarmed civilians.
No records were kept on the number of people killed by Tiger Force in the Song Ve Valley, said several former platoon members.
"We killed anything that walked," recalled former Sgt. William Doyle, a platoon team leader. "It didn't matter if they were civilians. They shouldn't have been there."
For young people of the valley, questions still abound over why the Army killed so many villagers.
The granddaughter of a farmer shot by Tiger Force soldiers said she is still confused over his death. "He was just a civilian. He was just a farmer," said Kieu Thi Lan, 29, a kindergarten teacher.
Like so many others who were born after the war, she said she is often reminded of her grandfather, Kieu Cong, by other family members.
Her neighbor, Nguyen Thi Que, 37, learned about the death of her mother from relatives.
She said she was 6 months old when her mother was fatally shot by a soldier in June, 1967 - her body left in a bunker.
"When I think about my mother, I get angry about the American soldiers who killed her."
Now a mother with three children, she said she often thinks about how her life could have been different if her mother was still alive. "When I look at my friends with their mothers, I get sad," she said as she stood in a rice paddy, her 9-year-old daughter playing at her side.
Even older villagers who lived through the war say they can't provide the answers.
Kneeling at the grave of her uncle, Tam Hau shook her head slowly as she talked about Dao Hue, a widower with no children.
The 68-year-old man was carrying geese to his hut after wading across the Song Ve River when he was shot to death by a Tiger Force lieutenant.
"He was a poor man," she said. "He was a kind person. He never hurt anyone. Why did they do this to him?"
DAY FOUR LEAD
(Story was published on Oct. 21, 2003)
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031022/SRTIGERFORCE/110220055 Article published October 22, 2003
DAY 4: Demons of past stalk Tiger Force veterans
By MICHAEL D. SALLAH and MITCH WEISS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS c THE BLADE, 2003
For Barry Bowman, the images return at night.
The elderly man praying on his knees. The officer pointing a rifle at the man's head.
The shot.
That piercing shot.
Before it's over, the old man drops to the ground - his body twitching in the blood-soaked grass.
Over and over, Mr. Bowman relives the execution of the Vietnamese villager known as Dao Hue.
Despite years of therapy, the former Tiger Force soldier is still deeply troubled by the brutal shooting he witnessed as a young medic in the Song Ve Valley.
He's not alone.
Of the 43 former platoon members interviewed by The Blade in an eight-month investigation of Tiger Force, a dozen expressed remorse for committing or failing to stop atrocities.
They share some of the same symptoms - flashbacks or nightmares - and over the past 36 years have sought counseling, they said.
Nine have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, a psychiatric condition that can occur following life-threatening experiences.
To this day, they wrestle with memories of Tiger Force's rampage through more than 40 hamlets in the Central Highlands of South Vietnam in 1967.
Mr. Bowman, who was standing next to Mr. Dao when he was shot to death by a platoon leader, said he remains shaken by the unprovoked attack on the 68-year-old man as he prayed for mercy.
"It was devastating," he said.
For many, the images never fade.
When Douglas Teeters closes his eyes, he sees villagers being shot as they wave leaflets that guaranteed their safety.
He takes anti-depressants and sleeping pills, but he can never seem to get enough rest, he said.
Mr. Teeters is among the one-in-six Vietnam veterans - about 500,000 - who have been treated for PTSD.
Most people who overcome the disorder are able to recall horrific events without feeling the trauma. The frequency of nightmares decreases while patients gain more control over their lives.
But it can be more complicated for those who committed - or failed to stop - atrocities, clinicians say.
In addition to the trauma, they are often saddled with a strong sense of guilt that can complicate the deeper feelings of fear and isolation, says Dr. Dewleen Baker, director of a PTSD research clinic in Cincinnati.
"It's another layer that needs to be addressed," she said. "It's not that easy. How do you reconcile killing civilians? It's hard, especially when you have a core set of values."
Sometimes, patients will vacillate between justifying their acts and condemning what they did, said Dr. David Manier, a psychology professor at the City University of New York who treats veterans for PTSD.
When the attacks on villagers are executions - not shootings in the frenzy and confusion of battle - "it makes it more difficult to make sense of things," he said.
Mr. Teeters said he struggles with his own acts - the executions of captured soldiers - and the actions of former platoon members in the deaths of villagers.
"The killing haunts me every minute of my life,'' he said in a recent interview. "To survive, you had to say, `The killing don't mean nothing.' That's how you got through it, man. But eventually, it all catches up with you.''
Former Sgt. Ernest Moreland refuses to talk about his role in the stabbing death of a detainee near Duc Pho, saying he fears he could be charged. But he said he still tries to rationalize the killing.
"The things you did. You think back and say, `I can't believe I did that.' At the time, it seemed right," he said. "But now, you know what you did was wrong. The killing gets to you. The nightmares get to you. You just can't escape it. You can't escape the past."
He is among nine of the veterans interviewed who said they turned to drugs or alcohol to ease their pain after returning from Vietnam.
"I drank too much. I got into a lot of fights," said Mr. Moreland, who now lives in Florida.
It wasn't until four years ago that he sought help. "I came very close to committing suicide,'' he said.
Another platoon soldier, Sam Ybarra, often drank for days at a time, rarely leaving his trailer in Arizona, said his relatives.
While he showed classic symptoms of PTSD, with long bouts of depression, he died in 1982 before being diagnosed. In the years after the war, he expressed remorse for killing civilians, said his mother, Therlene Ramos, 78.
"He drank to forget about what he did," she said. "He was a normal person before he went to Vietnam. When he comes back, he was an alcoholic, smoking. He was not the same person. He was alive, but dead."
Looking the other way
takes a toll on veterans
Several veterans said that by the time they joined Tiger Force, the unit was steeped in practices that violated Army regulations and international law.
To survive, they felt they had to look the other way.
One of those was Rion Causey.
The 55-year-old nuclear engineer said he participated in group counseling a decade after witnessing the killing of villagers northwest of Chu Lai. "I was waking up at night with the sweats," he said.
"I didn't condemn what was going on at the time," said the former medic. "I was 19 years old, but I knew what they were doing was wrong. It was wrong."
Two others said they are remorseful for standing by while platoon members took out their aggressions on villagers.
"I regret not reporting it," said former medic Harold Fischer, now 54. "I was young. I didn't know any better."
Now living in Texas, he was with Tiger Force during the military campaign near Chu Lai. He said he knew the slaughtering of civilians was morally wrong but feared retribution from platoon members for speaking up.
"We had to live with these guys in the field," he said. "They're armed and dangerous and motivated. They have a lot of testosterone. They're young. Who knows what they would do? You get into a firefight and you may get a proverbial `To whom it may concern round.'''
Several former platoon members said they went through stages - at first disturbed by the brutality against unarmed villagers and then ignoring it. Eventually, they admitted to taking part in war crimes.
Barry Bowman, now living in Rhode Island, said he joined Tiger Force to save lives.
In one of the atrocities investigated during the Army's 41/2-year inquiry, he refused a sergeant's order to kill a wounded prisoner in the Song Ve Valley. But four months later, he said he didn't hesitate to kill an injured villager dressed in the gray robes of a Buddhist worshipper.
"It was against everything I stood for," he recently said. "My basic mission was to save people's lives as a medic and I took it that way. But then, I could steadily see that the longer I stayed in combat, the more that was changing.''
A culture existed in Tiger Force that embraced the executions of prisoners and civilians - one encouraged by officers and sergeants.
One former sergeant now being treated for PTSD said he wanted his men to kill without hesitation.
"It didn't matter if they were civilians. If they weren't supposed to be in an area, we shot them," said William Doyle, 70, of Missouri. "If they didn't understand fear, I taught it to them."
He said he and others also cut off the ears of numerous dead Vietnamese to scare enemy soldiers.
Experts say body mutilations are classic symptoms of soldiers in secondary stages of PTSD in which fear turns into anger, said Dr. Baker, who treats veterans at the Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Medical Center. "They kick into a second stage - a rage mode."
Former platoon medic Joseph Evans, who lives in Atlanta, said in a recent interview that he severed ears. "You fall into this unbelievable frustration," said Mr. Evans, 59, who has been treated for PTSD. "You're burned and you're fried and you're scared, and you do it to make light of the burden you're underneath."
Former soldier says
he wants to apologize
William Carpenter said before he dies, he wants to return to the Song Ve Valley.
The 54-year-old former platoon specialist wants to go to the rice paddy where Tiger Force soldiers killed four elderly farmers.
He wants to apologize to their families.
Thirty-six years later, he said the assault on 10 farmers remains a vivid memory. "I want to tell them how sorry I am that it happened," said Mr. Carpenter, of Rayland, Ohio, who has been treated for PTSD.
Experts say one way of coming to terms with the disorder is to openly acknowledge past actions.
Mr. Carpenter said he didn't fire on the farmers but never reported the atrocity to commanders.
Like other former Tiger Force members, he said he can justify many of the aggressive acts toward villagers, but he said it's "in the middle of the night when the demons come that you remember. That you can't forget."
to: http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031022/SRTIGERFORCE/110190169 Article published October 22, 2003
THE SERIES: Elite unit savaged civilians in Vietnam | | | | Lautaro | | Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 8:36 pm Post subject: |
| to: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040328/NEWS08/403280373
Article published March 28, 2004
Tiger Force: Unit's founder says he didn't know of atrocities
By JOE MAHR
BLADE STAFF WRITER
A day after enemy soldiers had nearly overrun his base camp, the commander of one of the most battered and bloodied battalions in Vietnam prepped his elite platoon to hunt down their attackers.
In a 1966 pep talk laced with obscenities, the commander said he wanted 40 "hard charging" men, and anyone who couldn't be "hard charging" would be kicked off the special team.
The men did not let their commander down as they took the fight to the enemy, endured heavy casualties, and earned a coveted mention in a presidential unit citation.
But, within a year, that elite platoon - known as Tiger Force - would go on to hunt more than the enemy. Some soldiers would turn their rifles on hundreds of unarmed men, women, and children in what became the longest known string of atrocities by a U.S. battle unit in Vietnam - crimes that would be hidden by the Army for more than 36 years until revealed last fall by The Blade in its series Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths.
And Tiger Force's founder, David Hackworth, would go on to his own fame.
He would become the Army's youngest colonel in Vietnam at age 40, collecting an impressive array of battle decorations but also breaking rules as he saw fit - once running a brothel for his troops and smuggling gambling winnings out of Vietnam.
He would speak out against the Army leaders who ran the war, but then rely on them to let him retire and avoid a court-martial.
And, decades later, he would gain his most fame as a best-selling author, war correspondent, and syndicated columnist to 10 million readers a week - with supporters lauding him as a courageous whistleblower even as critics consistently questioned his integrity.
A rags-to-riches writer who now lives in a wealthy Connecticut enclave, Colonel Hackworth remains as outspoken as ever - bashing the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war and now saying "war is an atrocity."
But the 73-year-old is leery to talk about the shadow that's been cast over the once-celebrated unit that he helped create.
A man who repeatedly touted Tiger Force as a model for fighting guerrilla wars is unwilling to speculate about what caused the unit to spin violently out of control - leading to a series of war crimes in the Central Highlands of Vietnam in 1967, whose revelation has prompted the Army to open a rare review of a long-closed case.
Promoted out of Vietnam before the platoon began its string of atrocities, he now says he had no idea that the unit he once considered "my boys" had later committed crimes that became one of America's dark secrets of the war.
Task Force Hackworth
David Hackworth recalled "walking on air."
On Feb. 7, 1966, the 35-year-old Army major was given control of a task force - named after him - to rescue a company of soldiers pinned down by the enemy.
It was the first time he would orchestrate a battle in Vietnam, and the natural career progression of a Southern Californian orphan who had already turned heads in the Army.
Raised by a grandmother and foster parents, he sneaked into the Army in 1946 at age 15, survived four battle wounds in Korea, and earned a Silver Star there for heroics. The gangly grunt had impressed commanders so much they awarded him a battlefield commission to second lieutenant and gave him control of his own commando unit.
Four months before the formation of his task force in Vietnam, Major Hackworth had become second in command of the 101st Airborne's 1st battalion/327th Infantry Regiment. A month later he helped create Tiger Force - modeled after his commando unit in Korea.
It was a new kind of war, where large units were sitting ducks, and Tiger Force would be a new kind of unit, one that would break into small teams and head deep into dangerous territory to "out-guerrilla" the guerrilla fighters. And it would be the emergency responders to help out bigger units in trouble.
Major Hackworth called on his emergency responders that February afternoon at My Cahn. It would become the young unit's bloodiest battle to date - helping create the heroic image of the Tigers, as well as lead to some sore feelings years later among former soldiers of the platoon.
He ordered Tiger Force's commander, 1st Lt. Jim Gardner, to attack across a river into what he thought was a small unit of enemy soldiers. The Tigers affixed bayonets on the ends of their automatic rifles, forded a river, and charged the North Vietnamese.
The mission did not go as planned. The communists had plenty of manpower - concealed in well-defended positions - and began mowing down some Tigers and pinning down others. Major Hackworth radioed to the lieutenant, demanding more action. Moments later, Lieutenant Gardner was killed after hurling grenades into enemy bunkers before the rest of the team made it back to U.S. positions.
Years later, it would lead to feelings of guilt for Colonel Hackworth, who would write in his best-selling 1989 autobiography, About Face, that "when someone dies for you ... it's the worst of all crosses a combat leader has to bear."
By the time the battle was over, nearly every member of Tiger Force had been killed or wounded. Lieutenant Gardner was awarded the military's highest award, the Medal of Honor, posthumously.
Major Hackworth, uninjured in the battle, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross - the Army's second highest honor - for putting himself in harm's way as he planned and oversaw the battle, according to the award's notation.
Just how many Tiger Force soldiers deserved awards, and didn't get them, has been a sore subject for decades.
Military author Robert Lynn, who wrote about the battle in a 1990 article in Vietnam magazine, said former platoon soldiers he interviewed then were still upset.
"When these awards and decorations were made only to individuals that were in Hackworth's circle, the other members of Tiger Force felt shafted and cheated," Mr. Lynn recalled recently.
In an e-mail to The Blade last week, Colonel Hackworth said his subordinates, not him, would have been responsible for submitting award notifications through the chain of command.
"One thing I can tell you about awards is that the system is terribly unfair and frequently heroes go unrecognized because the paperwork is lost or their actions did not have the proper witnesses," he wrote.
The new Tigers
After the battle at My Cahn, fresh faces seeking adventure rushed to fill the slots of soldiers who died, were injured, or completed their one-year tours.
And Major Hackworth continued shepherding the unit.
By June, 1966, he had become the commander of the 1st battalion/327th infantry before a major battle near Dak To, when the enemy overran the U.S. base camp.
Colonel Hackworth recalled last week that the night of the attack the Tiger Force commander had disobeyed an order to set up an ambush of retreating enemy soldiers - prompting then-Major Hackworth to relieve him and setting the stage for his fight-or-get-out pep talk the next day.
That was the day that Washington Post reporter Ward Just came to see the respected battalion and quickly grew to admire the major.
"He was always looking for a fresh solution," recalled Mr. Just, now an author.
Tiger Force was considered that solution, and Mr. Just wrote about the pep talk and the unit's battlefield heroics in his 1967 book To What End.
He would also mention in his book something one of the troops had told him: That a Tiger Force soldier regularly cut the ears off enemy dead and mailed them to his girlfriend - a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions.
More than three decades later, Colonel Hackworth said last week he had never heard of the allegation and suspects the story was "a 19-year-old's bravado for the ears of a Washington reporter."
Weeks after the famed battle at Dak To, Major Hackworth was promoted to a lieutenant colonel and started a job in the Pentagon's personnel section.
And Tiger Force would go through a succession of commanders and soldiers. By May, 1967, the documented string of war crimes would begin with a soldier cutting the ears of a dead enemy soldier. The carnage evolved into soldiers targeting unarmed men, women, and children.
According to U.S. Army investigative records and interviews by The Blade of dozens of former Tiger Force soldiers, members of the platoon are estimated to have killed hundreds of non-combatants.
Former soldiers who witnessed the atrocities blame commanders who either weren't paying attention or inflamed the passions of soldiers with demands for enemy "body count" - at the same time offering inconsistent directives on just who was deemed "the enemy." Records show at least three soldiers complained to superiors about the war crimes, but the Army did nothing to stop them.
Looking back on the unit's descent into war crimes, Mr. Just believes the hands-on commander he had come to respect may have been able to avert the unit from crossing the line.
Colonel Hackworth won't speculate on the causes of the downward spiral of the unit.
"If you were not there," he said recently, "you simply cannot judge."
But he has seen war crimes first-hand. Once as a sergeant in Korea, one of his soldiers executed four prisoners after making them dig their own graves. Then-Sergeant Hackworth kicked the man out of his unit but didn't pursue charges, saying in About Face that no one reported war crimes there because "all of us had seen too many atrocities, and what is war anyway but one raging atrocity?"
Still, he has been willing to criticize those involved in the Vietnam War's most notorious atrocity, at My Lai, and the cover-up that ensued.
He has said the March, 1968, massacre that killed more than 500 villagers was an indictment of an Army leadership corps that consistently rotated itself to pad officers' resumes - and cared more about protecting their jobs than righting wrongs.
And last December he told the New York Times that the Vietnam War "was an atrocity from the get-go" and "there were hundreds of My Lais."
It was a controversial statement. Academics have long disputed just how many unknown atrocities occurred in Vietnam, but most scholars agree that the majority of soldiers in Vietnam did not commit war crimes. And no other single event of the war has surfaced to compare to the 4 1/2-hour rampage that occurred in the cluster of villages commonly known as My Lai.
When asked what he meant about there being hundreds of My Lais, the retired colonel told The Blade last week he was using a broad definition of war crimes.
"Every U.S. bomb or rocket that struck a city or a village killing non-combatants was a war crime," he said. "Who investigated this?"
The Tiger Force case would become the longest investigation in the history of the Vietnam War - from 1971 to 1975.
But, like all of the battalion commanders who'd left before 1967, Colonel Hackworth would not be among those questioned.
Still, just as the Tiger Force case began, the colonel squared off with Army investigators about his own problems.
He had spoken out against the war in June, 1971, prompting the Army to look into his background. They discovered a host of rules violations but did not court-martial him - instead letting him quietly retire to Australia, where he would run a restaurant, protest against nuclear war, and be awarded a United Nations Medal of Peace.
He wouldn't gain fame again back home until About Face came out in 1989 and he returned to America a celebrated war hero.
Hack's new wars
His dark hair has gone white. He's been slowed by age. The gangly teenager who wanted only to be a career soldier has now spent more years out of the Army than in it.
But Colonel Hackworth remains engaged in thoughts of war. From his home in upscale Greenwich, Conn., he writes a weekly syndicated column and operates a Web site - www.hackworth.com - for supporters to offer tips, learn his views, and buy his books.
The man who prefers to be called "Hack" may not want to talk about the troubles of his former unit, but he is quick to lament the loss of life in the latest war.
"Who's writing about the thousands of Iraqi civilian dead and wounded as [a] result of U.S. firepower during and after our operations in Iraq?" he said last week.
With a second Distinguished Service Cross and nine more Silver Stars, Colonel Hackworth has the clout to write about America's latest war - even if he has repeatedly fought questions over his own integrity in the last decade.
In 1996, as a Newsweek columnist, he readied a story about how the Navy's top admiral wore two unearned awards for valor - prompting the admiral to shoot himself even though he insisted he had made an honest mistake.
After the colonel insisted "there's no greater disgrace than wearing unearned valor awards," the U.S. Army Ranger Association complained that Colonel Hackworth was falsely claiming to have earned a "Ranger Tab" - the decoration commonly given to those who graduate from elite Ranger special forces training.
The Army concluded that the colonel's military personnel records mistakenly showed he'd earned the award when there wasn't proof. He insists he earned the award and has witnesses to prove it.
Six years later the ranger association still believes the colonel's explanation of how he earned the award "is simply not a credible story," according to association executive vice president Steve Maguire.
Colonel Hackworth has been able to win some battles. A former Army peer once accused him of making a major blunder in a key Vietnam battle, but a December book cleared the colonel and pinned the blame on someone else.
Still, detractors remain.
Some shake their heads at the colonel's outspoken bias against homosexuals - he once said there were no "greater liars or greater deceivers than gays."
Others complain he exaggerates problems to woo sympathy and supporters - a 1996 article in Slate Magazine called him a "major embarrassment" to journalism.
Colonel Hackworth remains undeterred.
More than 30 years after he left the battlefields of Vietnam, the war hero insists he's still looking out for the grunts left to fight a poorly planned war with substandard supplies.
"I am 73, and over the years I have seen too many soldiers pay a dear price for military incompetency."
Contact Joe Mahr at: jmahr@theblade.com or 419-724-6180. | | | | Lautaro | | Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 9:01 pm Post subject: |
| to: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040215/SRTIGERFORCE/102150175
Article published February 15, 2004
Investigators will question ex-GIs about killing spree
Rumsfeld refers case to secretary of Army
By MICHAEL D. SALLAH
and MITCH WEISS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
Copyright 2004 THE BLADE
WASHINGTON - In a case that has reached the top levels of the Pentagon, military investigators will begin interviewing former soldiers of an elite platoon accused of slaughtering scores of unarmed civilians in the Vietnam War.
The Army will begin meeting with witnesses as part an ongoing review under the direction of acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee, who was asked to look into the matter by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Army agents will meet with former paratroopers who said they watched the executions of villagers by Tiger Force in 1967 in the longest series of atrocities by a U.S. fighting unit in the conflict.
The move represents the first effort by the military to talk to soldiers since a Blade series in October revealed the platoon's brutal sweep through 40 villages where civilians were tortured and killed.
The newspaper found that field commanders knew of the soldiers' actions, and in some cases, encouraged the violence.
Though the Army spent 4 1/2 years investigating the special force starting in 1971 - substantiating 20 war crimes against 18 soldiers - the case never reached a military court and no one was charged.
Investigators are expected to take statements from former Army journalist Dennis Stout and ex-Tiger Force medic Rion Causey, both witnesses to the atrocities, to find out what happened during the platoon's patrols through the highly contested Central Highlands between May and November, 1967.
Both men said they were surprised when they were contacted last week by an Army investigator.
"I've waited years to talk to them," said Mr. Stout, 58, a former reporter for a military newspaper. "I saw people killed who didn't deserve to die. It was wrong. I've lived with this for more than 30 years."
The interviews are "part of the review and assessment of the original investigation," said Lt. Col. Kevin Curry, who declined to elaborate.
Officials would not say whether the Army would seek charges against former soldiers and officers.
As part of the new inquiry, the Army has appointed an investigator to look into why the original Army inquiry was dropped in 1975 with no charges filed.
Agents are expected to report their findings by March, according to a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D., Cleveland), whose office has been trying to spur a congressional investigation.
Mr. Kucinich said last week he was pleased the Army was going to talk to witnesses.
He said for three decades, the case has "been dismissed by the Army," and that it was time to carry out "a thorough and expedient investigation of this matter."
Military experts say the move by the Army to take testimony in the case is one of the few times the Army has reached back into history to look at war crimes committed by a U.S. fighting unit.
In 1999, Pentagon officials began interviewing witnesses to a U.S. military assault on South Korean civilians during the Korean War in 1950 after the Associated Press wrote stories about the massacre. Two years later, U.S. officials said an undetermined number of civilians were wrongfully killed.
Since The Blade's series in October, the revelations about Tiger Force "have been hard for the Army to ignore," said William Eckhardt, a war-crime expert and former military prosecutor during the Vietnam War.
"You need to know what happened, and maybe more importantly, to make sure it doesn't happen again."
A special fighting unit created to spy on enemy soldiers in Vietnam, Tiger Force spun dangerously out of control for seven months, according to the newspaper's series, which was based on thousands of records and interviews with dozens of former platoon members and Vietnamese villagers.
Grenades were dropped in earthen bunkers where women and children were hiding and unarmed farmers were executed in their fields. Prisoners were beaten and shot - their ears and scalps severed for keepsakes.
Mr. Stout, then a reporter for the Screaming Eagle newspaper, said he was barred from writing about the atrocities, but he said he reported the attacks to his commanders. No investigations were conducted, he said.
The other witness, Mr. Causey, 56, who served as a medic with Tiger Force in 1967, said he's prepared to talk about the platoon's attacks on villagers.
"What I can clearly say is that we went into that valley and we killed every male over 16 years old - without question," he said. "I only saw one [enemy] gun the whole time. It wasn't about killing enemy soldiers. This was about killing villagers. It went on and on. By the end, I had just had it. I was just sick of it."
He and Mr. Stout will be interviewed by Major Randal Doyle in late February, according to the two witnesses. Major Doyle declined to comment, referring questions to the Pentagon.
Though the Army began reviewing records of the Tiger Force case after The Blade's series, "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths," was published, the inquiry has reached a second stage.
Army officials have refused to say how many witnesses will be interviewed, or when the inquiry will end.
A spokesman for Mr. Kucinich's office said the findings will be presented to Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, the commander of the Army's Criminal Investigation Command, in early March.
General Ryder will then make a recommendation to Secretary Brownlee on the next course of action. The Army could order a new investigation or simply close the case, said the spokesman.
Mr. Kucinich said he wants to know why the original Tiger Force investigation was dropped in 1975.
The left-liberal, long-shot contender for the Democratic presidential nomination wrote to Secretary Rumsfeld in November, requesting a meeting to talk about the case.
Mr. Rumsfeld, who was defense secretary under President Gerald Ford when the original investigation was dropped, responded to Congressman Kucinich in a letter on Dec. 22, saying he referred the case to Secretary Brownlee.
Mr. Rumsfeld has repeatedly said he does not recall the original Tiger Force investigation - the longest war-crime case of the Vietnam War. More than 100 case agents were sent to 63 cities and military bases around the world to gather evidence.
Mr. Kucinich said he wants questions surrounding the case to be resolved. "I eagerly await to be briefed on the results,'' he said. "For over 30 years, this matter has been dismissed by the Army."
As the ranking Democrat on the House's national security subcommittee, he said he'll continue to press for a congressional inquiry.
For the past 30 years, Mr. Stout said he has been waiting to talk to the Army about the atrocities he witnessed as a young soldier.
"All these years, I was left thinking I was alone in trying to get these things exposed," said the Phoenix contractor, now 58. "But I was wrong. Now, I don't feel like I'm all alone. I feel such a sense of relief that this is finally being brought out in the open.'' | | | | Lautaro | | Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 9:03 pm Post subject: |
| to: http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040201/NEWS08/102010092
Article published February 1, 2004
2 Tiger Force vets urge Army inquiry
By MICHAEL D. SALLAH
and MITCH WEISS
BLADE STAFF WRITERS
For Rion Causey, it has been 37 years since he watched soldiers herd Vietnamese families against thatched huts before opening fire.
Thirty seven years since he saw soldiers lob grenades into a bunker where women and children hid for safety.
Thirty seven years since he counted the corpses.
After reading The Blade’s series last year of the Tiger Force’s rampage across the Central Highlands, he did something he debated for years: call the Pentagon.
But three months after offering his testimony to the Army about the war crimes he saw as a medic in 1967, he’s still waiting to talk to investigators.
The 56-year-old nuclear engineer is one of two witnesses to contact the Army since The Blade’s series, "Buried Secrets, Brutal Truths," revealed the platoon’s actions - the longest series of atrocities by a fighting unit in the Vietnam War.
Now, a leading human rights group and an Ohio congressman are urging the Army to interview the former soldiers.
Amnesty International will ask the Defense Department to meet with the witnesses, saying the atrocities are among the worst to emerge from reports about the Vietnam War in years.
Last week, presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich (D., Cleveland) wrote acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee, urging the Army to talk to the witnesses and conduct an investigation.
"Two veterans, both witnesses to atrocities, simply want to have their stories investigated by the Army and to find out why the Army failed to take action," Mr. Kucinich said.
The effort to bring the witnesses forward is the latest development in a case that has gained international attention since the newspaper series was published between Oct. 19 and 22.
A Vietnamese provincial official is tracing the movements of Tiger Force through the Central Highlands in 1967 to determine the whereabouts of thousands of civilians missing since the war.
The U.S. Army agreed to review the case in late October, but has yet to interview witnesses.
The Blade series showed at least 81 unarmed civilians - men, women and children - were killed by platoon members between May and November, in some cases as villagers prayed for their lives. But based on interviews with former soldiers and civilians, the platoon is estimated to have slain hundreds of unarmed villagers.
The newspaper found the Army conducted a 41/2 -year investigation beginning in 1971 - the longest war crimes inquiry of the Vietnam conflict - substantiating 20 atrocities involving 18 soldiers. But after reaching the Nixon White House, the case was quietly dropped in 1975 with no one charged.
A member of the platoon for six months in Vietnam, Mr. Causey said he watched as the unit broke the rules of war.
He contends that commanders who oversaw the unit - part of the 101st Airborne Division - knew of the atrocities, and, in some cases, encouraged the attacks to help boost what was known as "body count," the term used to count dead enemy soldiers.
"It was out of control," said Mr. Causey, who now resides in California. "You don’t tolerate things like that.
"I still want to see those officers called on the carpet. They have yet to answer to what happened, and that’s wrong."
Another witness who has stepped forward since The Blade series said he has written to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command to talk about the executions of civilians by Tiger Force.
"I saw it with my own eyes," said Dennis Stout, a former Army journalist, 58, who was assigned to cover Tiger Force in July, 1967, for the military newspaper, The Screaming Eagle. "I’ll never forget what I saw. I’ve lived with this for a long time."
He and Mr. Causey describe a platoon that was systematically targeting unarmed villagers in the Quang Ngai and Quang Nam provinces - some of the soldiers severing ears and scalps for souvenirs.
Mr. Stout, now a Phoenix contractor, said he watched Tiger Force soldiers round up 35 women and children and execute them in a rice paddy in the Song Ve Valley in July.
Mr. Causey said he counted as many as 120 civilians killed during a bloody, 33-day stretch in October and November northwest of Chu Lai.
"We would call on the radio to say that we found nine people in a hootch, and we would ask what we were supposed to do with them, and word would come back, ‘Kill them.’ So, we lined them up against the hootch, and shot them.’’
After the war, records show Army agents searched unsuccessfully for Mr. Causey in 1973 during the military investigation of Tiger Force.
Mr. Causey said he still struggles with the memories of the massacres 37 years ago - one of the reasons he wants to talk to investigators.
"I called them twice after reading the series before I got a call back from a colonel, who told me they were going to send a warrant officer to talk to me. That was three months ago."
Mr. Stout said he wrote the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command Jan. 23, but has not yet been interviewed.
"I’m here to tell them what went wrong," said Mr. Stout. "I’m here to tell them how things went out of control. I saw it from the ground.
"I’ll bet there are hundreds if not thousands of papers written by captains and colonels on how we can avoid military atrocities and what we can do to keep civilians from being killed. But there’s probably very little from enlisted people - privates and sergeants - and, unfortunately, that’s where it all starts."
Forty-three former Tiger Force soldiers were interviewed by The Blade as part of the series, with 10 admitting to killing unarmed women and children in what were clear violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and U.S. military law. Several said they regretted their actions.
Curt Goering, senior deputy executive director of Amnesty International, said last week his organization, which monitors human-rights violations, will raise the Tiger Force case with U.S. Defense Department officials later this year.
"It’s important that the government take this seriously, and if it doesn’t, it’s a great dereliction of duty," he said. "The last thing you want to do in light of these revelations - and these are serious - is to sweep them under the rug."
He said representatives of the human rights organization will ask the military to expand its review of the Tiger Force case by interviewing witnesses. "This is absolutely appropriate."
He said the case is one of many issues Amnesty International will bring to the government’s attention at a series of meetings later this year.
The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has repeatedly refused to comment on the review, which consists of comparing The Blade’s series with the records of the investigation from three decades ago.
In previous interviews, Joe Burlas, an Army spokesman, said some former soldiers could still be charged since there’s no statute of limitations for murder.
William Eckhardt, the prosecutor in the My Lai massacre case in which Army soldiers were accused of slaughtering 504 Vietnamese villagers in 1968, said the military should talk to the former soldiers.
"We can learn from My Lai and Tiger Force," said Mr. Eckhardt, a law professor at the University of Missouri at Kansas City.
"They serve a purpose. It’s important to examine what happened so the Army doesn’t make the same mistakes - especially with our forces in Iraq. What Tiger Force did was inexcusable. You can’t kill civilians. That’s just wrong."
Mr. Kucinich said the Army needs to take the case more seriously and move beyond a "paper review." He said he will press for hearings on the Tiger Force case before the House’s national security, emerging threats, and international relations subcommittee, on which he is the ranking Democrat.
"These individuals are in the right, since there is no statute of limitations for the war crimes of torturing and murdering civilians," he said. "The Army’s refusal to speak with them is regrettable. I am hopeful that public attention will help persuade the Army to improve its conduct in this case."
Dr. Joseph Nevins, a Vassar College professor who studies international atrocities, said the American military has tried in the past "to bury these kinds of cases," but that there is a "danger in doing so."
"What Tiger Force shows is that these atrocities did happen, and it wasn’t just My Lai. What we’ve tried to do is to forget that this happened in Vietnam, and to say My Lai was [the exception]. We need to learn from this. We definitely don’t need to just move on." | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
